WHAT CONSTITUTES A GOOD short story PLOT
WHAT CONSTITUTES A GOOD PLOT By this I mean a plot that meets the demands of art, is adequate to the purpose of the author, and satisfactorily impresses the reader. Judged by this standard good plots might seem to be few, but this is not the case. Without doubt most short-stories fail 9f acceptance because of some defect other than that of an unsatisfactory plot. Usually, plot is better than workmanship. A good short-story plot. must possess I.Simplicity Complexity serves well for the novel, but in the short- story it bulks too big for its vehicle. One hundred words are enough in which to compact a statement of the plot of almost any first-rate short-story. You cannot atone for the feebleness of situation by multiplying incident. Avoid wheels within wheels (sub-plots, they are called), for they divert from the power of the main situation. But, it is objected, some of the greatest artists triumphantly use sub-plots, double-plots, and episodes. Granted, but not because they know no better. Genius gloriously offends, making a virtue out of a weakness. Only swift runners take handicaps — and then sometimes lose. Be sure of your strength before you adopt a pet weakness. Remember that there is more than one meaning to the word " simple." In constructing your plot be certain to follow the right one. " The plot," says Dr. Bird, " may be so cleverly handled that we read with pleasure — and then at the end are disgusted with ourselves for being pleased, and enraged at the writer for deluding us ; for we thought there would be something beneath his graceful manners and airy persiflage, and lo, there is not." 21A simple plot is not a silly plot, a " blind lane " that gives promise of leading to a fascinating climax but which only turns the reader back in his tracks, hoaxed, ashamed and irritated. Simplicity consorts with unity. They are boon companions. Let unity — unity of conception, unity of treatment, unity of effect — wholly possess your p!ot. 2. Plausibility Arlo Bates has reminded us that a writer of fiction must be like the White Queen in Through a Looking Glass, who by practice was at length able to believe so many as six impossible things before breakfast. Some authors reserve this state of mind until after dinner, but it is a useful attainment for the romancer at all hours. Even if the author would not take oath that his tale is.true, still to him as he tells it it must betrue. If little fishes are made to talk, as Goldsmith remarked in commenting on Dr. Johnson's literary methods, they should talk like little fishes, not like whales. Plausibility makes the skilful liar and the adept fictionist. Under the Merlin-touch of both all things are believable, and the most credulous are silenced, even if unconvinced. In ancient times tales dealt with the impossible," then they took up possibilities, next they essayed improbable situations, later they depicted the probable, and nowadays Messrs. Howells, James & Co. insist upon limiting our themes to the inevitable. Whether this change from romance to realism is or is not progress is beside the question. It is a tendency to be reckoned with in story-telling. You must fabricate with due regard for what seems probable. No matter how impossible your romance, cock one eye toward plausibility of plot. In proportion as your theme leaves romance and walks toward realism your plot must clasp hands with truth and truth-seeming. But have a care at this point. The primary necessity for plausibility does not lie in the promises of a wonder- story, but rather in what follows. When the author asserts that Mars is peopled with such beings as H. G. Wells has invented, the reader good-naturedly accepts the premise. So far, all is easy. But now these Martians must behave in such a manner as to justify themselves and become realities. There is no objection to creating a wonder-island, or a human being who can fly, or an invisible hero, but there is objection to constructing a plot which involves such things without causing events to follow plausibly. The four-armed giant must perform deeds suited to his prowess. Upon the other hand, it will not do to introduce a 18A modification of Professor Brander Matthews' statement, that, " Fiction dealt first with the Impossible, then with the Improbable, next with the Probable, and now at last with the Inevitable." wonder-plot into an atmosphere which is not suited thereto. Once establish any " impossible " condition, and you are free to carry out your plot to its logical conclusion. Re-read Julian Hawthorne's words on page 80. The idea of plot is inherent in the human mind. Fiction found its germs in nature. In nature, cause points to effect, character results in conduct, conduct leads to destiny — these are cherished beliefs among civilized peoples. Mere chance can no more rule in the serious story than it can ultimately in life. Now and then accident, or what seems such to be, crops up, but the general reader does not want to feel that chance is making puppets of the characters in the story. In extravaganza lie forgiv'es incongruity, but otherwise he demands a plausible progress of incidents. You may be clever at carpentering a plot, but the convincing plot is a GROWTH. Get hold of this truth with both hands. The great literators recognized this necessity for consistent truth-seeming when they let fall significant words in their story- telling which, read in the light of the final issue, were really well-concealed forecasts — or, at least, portents. Such, in real life, were the words of Jesus which his followers afterwards knew to have had refer-1 ence to coming events. 3.Originality la " It is not sight the story-teller needs, but second sight" 20Give us something new, is the ever-increasing cry. Nor is this impossible, even with the field so well- tilled as it truly is. In his essay, The American Drama, Poe says : " Originality, properly considered, is threefold. There is, first, the originality of the general thesis ; secondly, that of the several incidents or thoughts by which the thesis is developed ; and, thirdly, that of the manner or tone, by which means alone an old subject, even when developed through hackneyed incidents or thoughts, may be made to produce a fully original effect — which, after all, is the end truly in view. " But originality, as it is one of the highest, is also one of the rarest of merits. . . . We are content perforce, therefore, as a general thing, with either of the lower branches of originality mentioned above." Professor Saintsbury has called our attention to the remarkable basic similarity among Hall Caine's plots for novels.2' Yet that entertaining romancer writes for a steadily increasing army of readers. He follows the spirit of Poe's dictum just quoted. 21Fortnightly Review,LVII N. S., p. 187. Also compare the plots of these three short-stories: (a) "The Cask of Amontillado," by Poe, in which a revengeful man lures his enemy to some ancient wine vaults and walls him up in a niche alive. (b) " La Grande Breteche," by Balzac, in which a husband learns that an intruder is hiding in a closet and has him walled up alive, before his wife's eyes. © "The Duchess at Prayer," by Edith Wharton, in which a cruel and neglectful husband learns that his wife has been intriguing with a cousin in a crypt of the famil:, chapel, and entombs the cousin alive by placing a heavy marble statue of his wife over the only entrance to the crypt. Mr. Leslie W. Quirk cites in The Editor some interesting cases of alleged plagiarism arising from several authors' using the same newspaper account as material for stories.22 Climax There is a great divide in every perfect plot. Toward its summit the story must steadily progress, directly and without episode or digression. On that summit the reader lingers in suspense for a longer or shorter moment. From thence the plot swiftly falls away to its full close. This great divide we call the climax." Interest The good plot must be interesting, it must touch the reader in a vital spot. The remote, out-of-date, feeble, tempest-in-a- teapot theme begets a story of like sort. Remember that when an editor takes up your manuscript or a reader your printed story, the chances are generally against you — you must win interest, it is not waiting for you ready-made. Your story is in competition with others. Your judge knows a good story when he meets it and is looking for good points in yours — with an eye open for defects as well. But be sure of this : what virtues soever your story may possess, it fails if it does not grip and hold the reader's interest, and the big interest in fiction is human interest. Even when animals play parts in the fictive drama they make up in partial human guise — like " Beer Rabbit " and " Beer Fox." Make up your mind that human interest cannot be " faked." Don't try to write about that which does not lay hold of your own soul mightily. Get close to the pulsating life about you, know it, feel it, believe in it, sympathize with it, do something for it, live it, and as it pours through the channels of your own being it will qualify you to picture that life for others interestedly and interestingly. Take Wilkie Collins's prescription for fiction- writing, " Make 'em laugh ; make 'em cry ; make 'em wait." At the same time, " mix your paint with brains." The great life- forces• which compel men's interest in real life — sacrifice, courage, genuineness, devotion, love, and all the rest — will grip your readers with convincing power. First transmute life into fiction, then fiction will awake to life. WHAT IS A SHORT-STORY PLOT In its simplest, broadest aspect, plot is the scheme, plan, argument or action of the story. But these are general terms and cover so many varieties of plot as to be'more brief than illuminating. Professor Bliss Perry says, rather vaguely, that plot is that which happens to the characters:" Some one else has loosely called it `• design applied to life." To hazard an exact definition: Plot in fictionis the climactic sequence of meats in relation to the characters. More simply, it is the unfolding of the story — it is the very story itself, divested of all its description, characterization and conversation. Not that a bare plot could stand alone as a short-story, but that without plot there could be no short-story in the precise sense in which that term is used in this treatise, for the notion of plot is at the basis of the modern short-story, and, if we except plot in the drama, is itself a recent development' The plot in fiction differs from the ordinary drift of events in life in one important respect: the events which go to make up a fictional plot are artificially arranged so as to bring about a particular result. Thus stories of the purest realism do not have complicated plots, but the drift of events is made (artificially) to follow a simple course which seems real because it is natural. The artificial touch may be no more violent than a mere hastening of natural events, or a re-arrangement of their sequence, still the artificiality is there. In this treatise the word " plot " is regarded as having a narrower meaning than that of the word " theme," 3which always stands for the subject-idea of the story, without any elaboration. It is out of the theme that the plot must grow, so the theme is really the elemental, embryonic, or potential plot. How the plot differs in scope and detail from the mere stated theme I shall now illustrate. The theme of " The Reformation of Calliope," by " 0. Henry," may be stated as, How the " Terror," Calliof* Catesby, came to serve as city marshal.This tells us little more than does the title. Indeed, at a pinch the title might serve as a compact statement of the theme. Compare this with the full statement of the plot — which, however, could be outlined in fewer words : " Calliope " Catesby is a Westerner — at best a nuisance, at worst a " terror "—who habitually hangs out " danger-signals of approaching low spirits," and these the denizens of Quicksand are prompt to observe. " The different stages of his doldrums " reach their climax in drink, and in the peculiar yell that has given Calliope his nickname. After shooting up the town, he is attacked by the city marshal, Buck Patterson, and a posse. Calliope takes refuge in the railway station, whither Buck follows and is shot. Just now the westbound train comes in and a little old lady alights. She is Calliope's mother, unexpectedly come to visit him. In a flash the Terror removes Buck's glittering city marshal's badge and pins it on his own shirt. He then pretends to his mother that he is city marshal and has shot Buck in the performance of his duty. The mother bathes the prostrate man's temple, which the shot has merely grazed. As Buck revives, she pleads with him to give up his reckless habits. With a glance of understanding at Calliope, Buck promises. The old lady then leaves the waiting- room to look after her trunk, and Buck, assured of the real Terror's willingness to reform, saves Calliope's reputation with his mother by allowing him to pose as city marshal during the week of her visit, and goes out to post the " boys " as to this novel state of affairs. But now we must look for one essential feature of a true plot — complication, by which I mean not complexity, but a happening, a crisis. Strictly, narratives without crises are without plots, and, as has been said, are tales rather than short-stories. In the former, events take a simple course; whereas in the latter this course is interrupted by a complication. Something happens, and that happening starts, or sometimes actually constitutes, the plot. The rival interferes with the lover, or the " villain " carries out his scheme, or an.accident happens, or a hidden condition is disclosed; whereupon things are tied up, and the reader remains more or less in suspense until the denouement — the untying, as the word really signifies. Unless something happens, whether outwardly or inwardly, we can have no plot, and no short-story. You might as well speak of the plot of a sermon, because it has a well-constructed plan, as to apply the term to the realistic tales and sketches• which are mere photographic records of life without any complication and without the element of fantasy. Read the most subtle of Mr. Henry James's analyses, or the most adroit of Mr. Howells's sketches, and you may delight in them, but that delight is not likely to be due to the existence of a plot. It must be attributed, rather, to your satisfaction in recognizing, say, the characters the literator has so skilfully delineated, and in observing the movement of their lives in natural channels. In the typical scory of plot your interest is of an entirely different sort. If it is not aroused by, it is at least greatly increased by, the complication in the plot, by the crisis in the affairs of the characters, and you eagerly wait for the unfolding. All the writer's skill in characterization, in description, in all the literary devices, is used largely if not solely to lead up effectively to this climax, and to handle the denouement with equal art. In his criticism, The American Drama, Poe has pointed out the necessity for compact unity in the true plot. He says : " A mere succession of incidents, even the most spirited, will no more constitute a plot than a multiplication of zeros, even the most infinite, will result in the production of a unit. This all will admit — but few trouble themselves to think further. The common notion seems to be in favor of merecomplexity;but a plot, properly understood, is perfect only inasmuch as we shall find ourselves unable to detach from it or disarrangeany single incident involved, without destructionto the mass. This we say is the point of perfection — a point never yet attained, but not on that account unattainable. Practically, we may consider a plot as of high excellence when no one of its component parts shall be susceptible ofremovalwithout detriment to the whole."